Imagine for a second that you are just completely
utterly exhausted. Like bone tired. Right. You
have been stuck in this grinding, horrifying
stalemate for four long years. Every single day
is a miserable fight for literal inches of muddy
cratered ground. You're just surrounded by rusted
barbed wire. Yeah. And the constant deafening
roar of artillery that just shakes your bones.
It's that overwhelming feeling that this Nightmare
is simply never gonna end. Because the lines
on the map, they really haven't meaningfully
moved since the war began. Not really, no. And
then suddenly in a single morning everything
changes. The static horror? of World War I trench
warfare has just blown wide open. In one massive,
devastatingly coordinated strike, we are talking
about an 11 kilometer breakthrough in a matter
of hours. Which is just staggering. It is. Welcome
to the Deep Dive. Today we are taking our stack
of sources, the historical records, the diaries,
the tactical maps, and we're heading to the Western
Front. Specifically, August 8th, 1918. The Battle
of Amiens. It truly stands as one of the most
dramatic momentum shifting moments in early 20th
century history. Our mission today, as we synthesize
these sources, is to really understand the mechanics
of this sudden shift. Right. We want to break
down how the Allies managed to shatter that seemingly
unbreakable stalemate. And deliver a blow so
profound that it became forever known as the
Black Day of the German Army. We are going to
look at the deception, the technology, and honestly
the sheer human endurance that made it possible.
The level of secrecy and the complex coordination
we're seeing in these documents, it's astonishing.
It is. When you read through the timelines, it
feels less like a traditional military. campaign
and more like, I don't know, a heist fakes heist.
Yeah, like a heist movie but executed with hundreds
of thousands of troops. Exactly, and hundreds
of armored tanks and this unprecedented web of
multi -sensory deception. It requires asking
how an entire army essentially vanishes into
thin air. Right, only to reappear exactly where
the enemy least expects them. The scale of that
deception is staggering, especially when we place
it within the broader context of the spring and
summer of 1918. Because both the allied and central
powers were just completely spent after years
of attritional warfare. Exactly. But the strategy
implemented at Amiens didn't merely break the
physical trenches. No, it completely broke the
psychological will of an entire empire. And to
understand how an army that has held firm through
years of unimaginable bombardment suddenly watches
its lines evaporate in a single morning. We have
to examine the profound exhaustion and desperation
that preceded it. Right. I want you, the listener,
to keep that psychological state in mind as we
go through this. Put yourself in the boots of
those soldiers witnessing this impossible breakthrough.
Okay, let's unpack this. Let's look at the gritty
reality of the Western Front in the early months
of 1918. Good place to start. To grasp the magnitude
of the Amian breakthrough, we first need to understand
the terrifying position the Allies found themselves
in just a few months prior. It was incredibly
bleak. According to the strategic overviews in
our sources, in early 1918, Germany suddenly
possessed this massive, albeit temporary, advantage
in manpower. How did they suddenly get this massive
influx of troops? Well, that influx ties directly
back to the geopolitical collapse happening on
the opposite side of the continent. In Russia.
Exactly. The Russian Empire had fallen to revolution,
and the new Bolshevik government signed the Treaty
of Brest -Litovsk with the Central Powers. And
that treaty formally ended the war on the Eastern
Front. Right. And for the German High Command,
this was a monumental windfall. Because they
suddenly had upwards of 50 divisions. Hundreds
of thousands of battle -hardened... immediately
loaded these forces onto trains, rushed them
directly to the Western Front in France and Belgium.
It fundamentally shifted the balance of power
overnight. It really did. The Allies had been
fighting a two -front war, relying on Russia
to keep German forces occupied in the East. But
with Russia out, all that German military might
was now pointing directly at the British and
French lines. But the sources also indicate that
the German leadership knew this advantage came
with a very strict expiration date. They were
acutely aware of the ticking clock across the
Atlantic. The Americans. Yes. The United States
had entered the war, and American troops were
actively mobilizing, training, and beginning
to arrive in France in ever increasing numbers.
Every passing week meant the American Expeditionary
Force was growing stronger. The German leadership.
particularly General Eric Ludendorff, understood
that their numerical superiority was strictly
temporary. He was a desperate gamble. They had
to launch a decisive war winning offensive to
crush the British and French before the American
manpower tipped the scales permanently and irreversibly
against them. That sets the stage for Operation
Michael, launched on March 21st, 1918. The objective
was to drive a wedge between the British and
French armies, push the British back toward the
English Channel and essentially knock them out
of the war entirely. But Operation Michael was
merely the opening salvo. It was the first in
an exhausting series of overwhelming massive
attacks known as the German Spring Offensive.
The German command utilized these highly trained
shock troops, right? The Stormtroopers to bypass
strong points and infiltrate deep into Allied
lines. Following Operation Michael, they launched
Operation Georgette in April, Blucher York in
May, Nice and out in June and the Marnereen's
offensive in mid -July. They were throwing the
absolute totality of their resources at the Allied
lines. Desperately searching for that one critical
weak point that would shatter the front. And
reading through the operational maps, one of
their absolute primary targets during these offensives
was the city of Emile. Amiens was crucial. It
wasn't just a dot on the map. It was situated
in the Picardie region of northern France, and
it served as the logistical heart for the Allies
in that sector. A vital railway junction. Exactly.
In an era where you needed trains to move millions
of artillery shells, coal, and troops. Losing
Amiens would have been catastrophic. If the Germans
took that rail hub, they could sever the critical
supply lines that connected the French armies
in the south to the British armies in the north.
The stakes were existential for the Allies. If
Emian's fell, the British expeditionary force
could have been entirely cut off from its French
allies and pinned against the sea. But the German
advance, despite its initial ferocity and deep
penetrations, was finally brought to a halt.
At a small town called Villers -Bretonneux, just
a few miles east of Emian by a determined defense
from British and Australian troops in early April.
The Germans continued to push elsewhere along
the front, bleeding themselves dry, but they
never captured Amia. And they never achieved
that final decisive breakthrough. It brings to
mind a very specific scenario. Think of a fighter
who knows they are behind on the scorecards.
OK. So in the final rounds, they pour every single
ounce of their remaining energy into a massive
flurry of heavy punches. Swinging wildly. Right,
trying to secure a knockout. But if the opponent
manages to cover up and survive that flurry,
the attacking fighter is going to be completely
gassed out. Their arms will be heavy. their lungs
burning. They will have absolutely nothing left
in the tank to defend themselves. That mirrors
the state of the German Army by the end of their
Marne Rheams offensive in July 1918 perfectly.
The German war machine had completely exhausted
itself. Their manpower reserves from the east
were spent. Their supply lines were stretched
to the breaking point over the newly captured
cratered terrain. And the surviving troops were
starving, demoralized and physically ruined.
The flurry of punches had failed. The Allied
Supreme Commander, General Ferdinand Fogg, recognized
this strategic exhaustion immediately. He saw
that the German salient, the bulge they had created
in the Allied lines was deeply vulnerable. So
Fogg ordered an immediate counteroffensive, resulting
in a major Allied victory at the Second Battle
of the Marne in late July. That victory actually
earned Fogg a promotion to Marshal of France.
A fitting reward for turning the tide. Definitely.
Following that defeat at the Marne, the German
forces were forced into a fighting withdrawal
back toward the north. But Fasch understood that
simply halting the German attack was not enough.
He needed to seize the initiative and permanently
transition the allied armies from a defensive
posture into a relentless coordinated offensive.
But the allies couldn't just resort to the tactics
of 1916. They couldn't go back to the Battle
of the Somme Playbook, where they would bombard
a trench line for a week and then send tens of
thousands of infantrymen walking slowly across
no man's land. Only to be butchered by surviving
machine guns. If they were going to counter -attack
at Amiens, they needed a completely new operational
doctrine. That brings us to the strategic masterminds
who orchestrated this shift. On July 23rd, fresh
off the momentum of the Marne victory, Foch outlined
his grand strategy. His immediate priority was
to reduce the various salience the Germans had
carved into the lines. Crucially, he wanted to
push the Germans far enough back from Amiens
to entirely free those vital railway lines from
the constant threat of long range German artillery
fire. Interestingly, The commander of the British
Expeditionary Force, Field Marshal Sir Douglas
Haig, alongside General Sir Henry Rawlinson of
the British 4th Army, had already been independently
developing a plan for a major offensive in that
exact sector. When the British lines had stabilized
back in April, Rawlinson's 4th Army had taken
over the front, straddling the Somme River. The
deployment placed the British 3rd Corps under
Lieutenant General Richard Butler north of the
river. and the Australian Corps, commanded by
Lieutenant General John Monash, to the south.
We need to spend some time looking at Lieutenant
General John Monash. Yes, because the historical
consensus in our sources points to him as the
true tactical architect of the Amiens breakthrough.
A pivotal administrative change occurred on May
30th. All five Australian infantry divisions
were united under a single corps headquarters,
with Monash in command for the very first time.
Monash is a deeply compelling figure in military
history. He really is. Before the war he was
a civil engineer and a pioneer in reinforced
concrete construction in Australia. He brought
that exact same meticulous mathematical engineering
mindset to the battlefield. He was not a member
of the traditional aristocratic military establishment.
Field Marshal Hague, who was often highly critical
of his subordinates, noted in his own diary that
Monash had all the threads of the operation in
his hands. Monash view the traditional method
of trench warfare, the endless agonizing artillery
bombardments, followed by waves of unprotected
infantry as intellectually bankrupt and needlessly.
wasteful of human life. His operational philosophy
was radically modern. Monash believed in relying
on technology, supreme surprise, and above all,
coordinated arms. He envisioned a battlefield
where tanks, airplanes, artillery, and infantry
did not fight isolated battles. But operated
as one seamless, highly synchronized machine.
And Monash had already field -tested this exact
philosophy. Just five weeks prior to Amyan, on
July 4th. He orchestrated a localized, highly
successful counter -attack known as the The German
defenders at Hamel were deeply entrenched in
advantageous terrain with vast interlocking fields
of machine gun fire. These were the types of
positions that had historically taken months
and tens of thousands of lives to capture. But
at Hamel, Monash discarded the traditional playbook.
He didn't order days of preliminary artillery
shelling, which would have only cratered the
ground and warned the Germans an attack was imminent.
Instead, the artillery remained completely silent
until the exact minute the infantry and the newly
supplied tanks began moving forward together.
The coordination was so precise and the surprise
so total. that the German defenders were rapidly
overrun with relatively minimal allied casualties.
It was a flawless proof of concept. The success
at Hamel proved that the open, chalky terrain
south of the Salm River was perfectly suited
for a massive, large -scale offensive utilizing
these combined arms tactics. Consequently, General
Rawlinson took Monash's proposals, expanded them,
and submitted the grand plan to Haig in mid -July.
Haig then forwarded the concept to Marshal But
this planning phase was not without significant
friction between the Allied commanders. Rawlinson
and Monash were absolutely adamant that the entire
success of the Amiens operation hinged on achieving
total paralyzing surprise. To do that, they planned
to utilize armor on a scale never before seen.
By the summer of 1918, British factories were
finally producing advanced tanks in large numbers.
The British commanders wanted to skip the preliminary
artillery bombardment entirely, send hundreds
of tanks crashing through the wire and catch
the German defenders completely unaware. Fox,
however, during a critical planning meeting on
July 24th, agreed to the overall concept, but
imposed one major condition. He insisted that
the French First Army, commanded by General Marie
-Eugène Devanay, must participate in the attack.
The French First Army was holding the line immediately
to the south of the British Fourth Army. From
Rawlinson's perspective, this presented a massive
tactical problem. The French First Army did not
possess a fleet of heavy tanks. If the French
lacked armor to break the barbed wire and suppress
the machine guns, they would have no choice but
to rely on a traditional hours long artillery
bombardment to soften up the German trenches
before their infantry could advance. And if the
French started indiscriminately blasting the
German lines with high explosives. The element
of surprise for the entire Allied line would
vanish instantly. Every German unit in the sector
would immediately know a major offensive was
underway. It was a profound strategic impasse.
The British reliance on technological surprise
was clashing directly with the French reality
of traditional infantry tactics. However, they
eventually negotiated a brilliant The French
forces would indeed participate and secure the
southern flank, but they would not fire a single
artillery shell or launch their infantry assault
until exactly 45 minutes after the British, Australian
and Canadian forces had already launched their
surprise armored thrust. It preserves the initial
shock and awe for the main spearhead, while still
bringing the immense weight of the French military
into the engagement shortly after the chaos had
already begun. They also adjusted the timeline,
pulling the date of the attack forward from August
10th to August 8th. They wanted to strike while
the German forces were still disorganized and
attempting to dig in after their long, exhausting
retreat from the Marne. The operational blueprint
was finalized. Rawlinson met with his corps commanders
on July 21st, to solidify the details. This specific
deployment is historically notable because it
placed the highly regarded Australian Corps and
the equally formidable Canadian Corps attacking
shoulder -to -shoulder for the very first time.
Here's where it gets really interesting. Because
drafting a brilliant, technologically advanced
plan in a chateau headquarters is one thing.
Actually executing it on the ground is a completely
different universe. The logistics of hiding an
army of hundreds of thousands of men, thousands
of artillery pieces, and literally hundreds of
massive deafening tanks from an enemy entrenched
just a few hundred yards away. It requires a
level of deception that is frankly difficult
to comprehend. We are looking at one of the most
elaborate multi -layered bluffs in military history.
Consider the logistical nightmare of moving the
Canadian Corps alone. You have four entire fully
equipped infantry divisions, roughly a hundred
thousand men, that need to be secretly transported
from their positions near Arras. all the way
down to the Amiens sector, without the German
observation balloons or reconnaissance planes
noticing a single thing. The sources emphasize
that pulling this off was a supreme testament
to how highly evolved the staff work of the British
armies had become by 1918. They didn't just enforce
strict blackout rules. They actively constructed
a massive complex diversion. The Allied command
took a tiny detachment from the Canadian Corps.
Just two infantry battalions, a wireless radio
communications unit, and a casualty clearing
station. And they shipped them all the way north
to the Ypres salient in Flanders, Belgium. To
understand why that specific location matters,
we have to look at German intelligence estimates.
The German high command knew an allied attack
was inevitable. But they were trying to predict
where the blow would fall. They strongly suspected
an offensive would come either further east near
Reims or far to the north in Flanders near Mount
Kemmel. By sending this highly visible, noisy
Canadian detachment up to Flanders, the Allies
were intentionally feeding the German intelligence
apparatus exactly what they expected to see.
It functions like a massive sleight of hand trick.
The Canadian wireless unit up in Flanders starts
broadcasting massive amounts of radio traffic.
The medics set up highly visible casualty clearing
stations. They make sure German spotters clearly
see the distinct Canadian uniform insignia moving
around the northern trenches. They're actively
waving a red flag up north to force the Germans
to look the wrong way. While the actual 100 ,000
man corps slips quietly into the southern Amiens
sector. And the discipline required to maintain
this secrecy in the South was absolute. Allied
troops were strictly ordered to move only under
the cover of darkness. During daylight hours,
they were hidden in woods and villages. To further
confuse any German observers who might notice
movement, Allied troops would sometimes deliberately
march in the wrong direction during the day.
Only to turn around and march toward the front
at night. The written orders distributed to the
troops included a stark, pasted -in warning Keep
your mouth shut. They went to incredible lengths
to disguise the intent. In the official planning
documents and communications, the word offensive
was strictly forbidden. The entire massive operation
was casually referred to as a localized raid.
The movement was so tightly controlled that the
Canadian Corps wasn't even fully assembled in
their final jumping off positions until August
7th, literally hours before the attack was scheduled
to commence. While the infantry maneuvers were
a master class in deception, The artillery plan
is where the technological innovation truly shines.
If the core philosophy of the attack is absolute
surprise, that presents a massive problem for
the artillery batteries. Historically, Before
launching a barrage, artillery units had to fire
ranging shots. They would fire a few shells,
spotters would observe where those shells landed,
and the gunners would adjust their aim to account
for wind, temperature, and barrel wear. But firing
ranging shots acts as an immediate alarm bell
to the enemy that their specific position is
about to be attacked. So the Allied command tasked
Major General C .E .D. Budworth, the senior artillery
officer for the 4th Army, with devising a master
fire plan that would be devastatingly accurate
on the very first volley. Without a single ranging
shot being fired. And the sheer volume of firepower
we are talking about here is immense. The Allies
amassed 1 ,386 field guns and howitzers, backed
up by 684 heavy guns. That is 27 medium artillery
brigades. and 13 heavy batteries all secretly
moved into position. To aim thousands of artillery
pieces silently and accurately, Budworth relied
heavily on a relatively new highly mathematical
technique known as sound ranging coupled with
meticulous aerial photography. Sound ranging
in 1918 was an incredibly complex process. It
involved placing a precisely measured array of
specialized microphones along the front line,
connected by miles of fragile wire to a central
recording station equipped with an oscillograph.
Let's delve into how that actually worked in
an era before digital computers. When a concealed
German artillery piece fired, the sound wave
of the blast would travel across the battlefield
and reach those different microphones at slightly
different milliseconds by analyzing the film
strips from the oscillograph and calculating
those minute time differences while also factoring
in the air temperature and wind speed of the
day. The allied technicians could mathematically
triangulate the exact coordinates of the enemy
gun. They combined that hard mathematical data
with thousands of high -resolution photographs
taken by reconnaissance aircraft, creating a
hyper -accurate map of the German defenses. Because
of this painstaking scientific preparation, Budworth's
master timetable allowed the allied artillerymen
to pre -target 504 out of the 530 known German
artillery batteries in the sector. They had the
coordinates locked in, entirely in secret, ready
to unleash hell at zero hour. We have to talk
about the tanks. Yes, because masking the movement
of the armor might be the most fascinating, logistical
detail in these sources. Almost 600 tanks were
allocated for the Amiens offensive. You had the
heavy Mark V fighting tanks, the extended Mark
V -star models designed to cross wider trenches.
Unarmed supply tanks designed to carry ammunition.
And the faster, lighter medium Mark... A Whippet
tank's assigned to support the cavalry corps.
But a World War I tank is not a stealth vehicle.
Far from it. A Mark V tank weighed 29 tons and
was powered by a massive 150 horsepower Ricardo
engine. The acoustic signature of just one of
these machines echoing across the quiet pre -dawn
countryside was deafening. The sound of 600 of
them rumbling toward the front lines, grinding
their metal tracks through the mud, would easily
alert every German sentry within a five -mile
radius that an armored assault was imminent.
So how do you hide the sound of a mechanical
army? The Allied planners came up with a brilliantly
simple, yet incredibly dangerous solution. They
decided to hide the noise of the tank engines
using airplane engines. They calculated that
the twin -engine Hanley Page 0400 heavy bombers
used by the Royal Air Force had an acoustic profile
that sounded remarkably similar to the deep rumble
of a Mark V tank. The plan was to launch these
massive bombers and have them fly continuous,
low -altitude patrols up and down the German
lines throughout the night. By deliberately flooding
the battlefield with the droning noise of aircraft
engines, they aimed to completely drown out and
mask the mechanical clatter of the hundreds of
tanks moving into their final assembly areas
below. But the weather almost derailed the entire
deception. On the night they needed to execute
this sound masking operation, an unseasonably
dense heavy fog rolled in blanketing the entire
region. The visibility dropped to near zero.
Flying a massive rudimentary bomber at low altitude
in pitch black fog with only 1918 navigation
instruments was essentially a suicide mission.
The commanders of the two RAF squadrons assigned
to the task felt the conditions were so hazardous
they refused to officially order their pilots
into the air. Instead, they asked for volunteers.
Two men from 207 Squadron stepped forward to
take the risk. Captain Gordon Flavell and Captain
William Peace. They volunteered to fly their
Hanley Page bombers through that blinding fog,
weaving dangerously close to the ground, risking
a fatal crash at any second solely to generate
the necessary noise. Their immense bravery was
absolutely critical to maintaining the secrecy
of the entire Amiens offensive. And both men
were later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross
for their actions that night. Even with the radio
diversions, the sound ranging, and the bombers
flying in the fog, the entire meticulously planned
operation came within a hair's breadth of total
disaster just 48 hours before it was supposed
to begin. On August 6th, the Allied command experienced
a moment of sheer terror. The German 27th Division,
a highly elite and heavily armed Stastrup information,
suddenly launched a fierce localized attack north
of the Somme River. This attack hit the exact
sector where the Allied forces were secretly
crammed together, massing for their own offensive.
The panic in the Allied headquarters must have
been absolute. The initial thought had to be
that the deception had failed, the German spies
had figured it out, and the enemy was launching
a preemptive strike to ruin the buildup. However,
the historical records confirm that the German
command was completely oblivious to the Allied
buildup. This sudden attack was merely a localized
act of retaliation. A week earlier, on the night
of July 31st, the 5th Australian Division had
conducted an aggressive trench raid north of
the Somme, taking dozens of German prisoners.
The attack by the German 27th Division on August
6th was ordered solely as payback for that specific
raid. They did manage to penetrate roughly 800
yards into the Allied lines, causing chaos and
casualties, but they had not uncovered the massive
trap waiting for them. What a heart -stopping
coincidence. The German shock troops eventually
withdrew back to their original trench lines
by the morning of August 7th, but the disruption
forced the Allied commanders to scramble. Redraw
lines and make frantic last -minute adjustments
to their assembly areas. It is a perfect reminder
that no matter how brilliant your mathematical
fire plan is or how clever your airplane diversion
is, the chaotic, unpredictable friction of war
can always throw a massive wrench into the machinery.
But despite the anxiety, the secrecy held firm.
The German high command remained in the dark.
The Canadian troops were in position, the thousands
of artillery pieces were locked onto their targets,
and the hundreds of tanks were idling quietly
in the unseasonably thick fog. The timeline brings
us to the early pre -dawn hours of August 8th,
1918. The stage is set. It is 420 a .m. A dense
freezing fog is clinging tightly to the ground,
reducing visibility to mere yards. Along the
line of Rawlinson's 4th Army, the British 3rd
Corps is positioned north of the Somme River.
In the center, south of the river, waits the
Australian Corps. South of them, the Canadian
Corps. And further south, the French 1st Army
is prepared to launch their delayed attack. It
is zero hour. At exactly 420 a .m., the eerie
silence of the foggy morning is shattered with
apocalyptic violence. Over 2 ,000 allied artillery
pieces, guided entirely by Budworth's sound -ranging
mathematics, open fire simultaneously. They deliberately
avoided using massive quantities of poison gas
shells in the days leading up to the attack.
Which was unusual for 1918. Because they wanted
to ensure the Germans felt no sense of impending
dread. The shock was absolute, instantaneous,
and completely overwhelming. Let's try to visualize
the sheer terror of this moment from the perspective
of a German sentry. You are standing in a freezing
trench surrounded by dense white fog. You can't
see anything. Without a single warning shot,
the earth simply erupts. 500 of your own artillery
batteries, the guns you rely on for protection,
are violently destroyed in a single synchronized
strike. And then out of that blinding mist, monstrous
shapes begin to emerge. Hundreds of 29 -ton tanks
moving relentlessly forward. followed immediately
by tens of thousands of Allied infantrymen advancing
tight behind a creeping barrage. We should detail
what a creeping barrage actually entails because
it requires incredibly difficult coordination.
The Allied artillery was not firing at stationary
targets anymore. They were firing a continuous
wall of high explosive and shrapnel shells that
advanced at a precise mathematical rate. Usually
about 100 yards every three minutes. The Allied
infantry were trained to walk dangerously close
behind this advancing wall of explosive. The
goal was to force the German defenders to stay
hiding deep inside their dugouts until the barrage
passed over them. At which point the Allied infantry
would immediately be on top of the trench before
the Germans could even man their machine guns.
The psychological and physical shock was so profound
that it took the surviving German forces a full
five minutes to organize themselves enough to
even begin returning artillery fire. And the
sources point out an incredible detail about
the speed of this advance. When the German artillery
finally did manage to fire back, they aimed their
shells at the known Allied assembly points in
forward trenches. But the Allied forces were
moving so rapidly behind that creeping barrage
that those assembly areas were already completely
empty. The German artillery was furiously bombing
empty mud. In the first phase of the assault
alone, seven entire divisions surged forward
into the fog. You had the British 18th and 58th
Divisions, the Australians 2nd and 3rd, and the
Canadian 1st. Second and third divisions. Additionally,
elements of the 33rd Infantry Division of the
U .S. Army National Guard were attached to support
the British forces in the difficult northern
sector. The forward momentum was simply unstoppable.
By 7 .30 a .m., just three hours and 10 minutes
after the very first shot was fired, the attacking
forces had completely captured the entirety of
the first German defensive position. They had
advanced nearly four kilometers, or about two
and a half miles, into enemy territory. In the
center of the line, the supporting units effortlessly
pushed through the lead elements to attack the
second tier of objectives another two miles further
deep. The Australian units secured their first
targets by 7 10 a .m. and barely an hour later
the fourth and fifth Australian divisions alongside
the Canadian fourth division had passed entirely
through the initial breach and were operating
in open country. The combined arms synergy was
operating flawlessly. The original battle plan
actually called for the third phase of the attack
to be carried out by infantry who were physically
riding inside the newly designed Mark 5 -star
tanks. These tanks had been elongated specifically
to carry troops across the massive anti -tank
trenches of the Hindenburg Line. But the frontline
infantry was advancing with such relentless,
aggressive steed that they largely ignored the
tanks and secured the final objectives completely
on foot. Because the Allies had ripped such a
massive hole completely through the deep German
defenses, they were able to unleash the cavalry.
A unit that had been largely useless during years
of static trench warfare. They sent a cavalry
brigade charging into the Australian sector and
two full cavalry divisions poured into the Canadian
sector, exploding the open ground. And in the
skies above, the newly formed Royal Air Force
was flying low -level sorties, strafing retreating
German columns and preventing the enemy commanders
from organizing any sort of coherent secondary
defense. We must also account for the French
First Army on the southern flank. They initiated
their preliminary artillery bombardment right
at 420 a .m. As agreed, hammering the German
positions for three hours and 20 minutes. Once
the shock had set in, the French 9th Corps and
31st Corps rolled forward. They swiftly captured
the town of Moroy by 930 a .m., took Miziere,
and occupied Fresno by nine o 'clock. When you
look at the timeline, the speed of this operation
is simply absurd by the grim standards of World
War I. We are discussing a conflict where armies
would regularly fight for six straight months,
enduring hundreds of thousands of casualties
just to move the front line a few miserable miles.
But on the morning of August 8th, the Canadian
and Australian forces in the center of the attack
advanced three miles from their starting positions
before 11 a .m. There is a remarkably telling
anecdote in the sources that perfectly captures
the sheer velocity of the allied breakthrough.
The advance was so rapid and unprecedented that
an entire party of high ranking German officers
and divisional staff were taken prisoner by allied
troops while they were literally sitting at a
table eating their morning breakfast. They were
miles behind what they assumed was the front
line. They had absolutely no idea the defensive
perimeter had been obliterated and that the enemy
was already operating deep in their rear areas.
By the time the sun set on that first day, the
Allies had punched a catastrophic hole in the
German lines south of the Somme River. A gap
24 kilometers long, that is 15 miles of front
line, was torn completely open. Let's examine
the concrete data from day one because the numbers
paint an incredibly stark picture of just how
one -sided this mechanized breakthrough was.
On average, the Allied forces penetrated 11 kilometers,
or nearly seven miles, deep into enemy territory
in a single day. Breaking those numbers down
by sector, the Canadian Corps achieved the deepest
penetration, advancing 13 kilometers. gained
11 kilometers. The French forces gained 8 kilometers.
And the British forces, fighting through heavily
cratered and difficult terrain north of the Somme,
gained about 3 .2 kilometers. In total, the Allied
armies captured over 15 ,000 German prisoners
on August 8th alone. 15 ,000 men choosing to
surrender in a span of hours. And the overall
casualty figures are equally striking. The total
German losses for that single day were estimated
to be around 30 ,000 men killed, wounded or captured.
In stark contrast, the massive Allied assault
force suffered only around 12 ,000 casualties.
It was a sweeping, historic tactical victory.
However, what secures the Battle of Amias its
legendary status in history isn't merely the
sheer acreage of physical territory. recaptured
or even the devastating casualty ratios. It was
the profound irreversible psychological devastation
this defeat inflicted upon the German high command
and the average soldiers shivering in the trenches.
Physical ground can be lost in a war and it can
be won back a week later. But when the fundamental
fighting spirit of an army is broken, it is a
catastrophic injury from which a military force
rarely recovers. General Erich Ludendorff, the
quartermaster general and effectively the commander
of the German military effort, recognized this
instantly. In his memoirs, he famously designated
August 8th as the Schwarzer Tag des Deutschen
Hares. The Black Day of the German Army. And
reading his accounts, Ludendorff made it explicitly
clear why he chose that somber title. He wasn't
despairing over the miles of French farmland
they had lost to the advancing tanks. He called
it the Black Day because on that morning he realized
the underlying morale of the German soldier had
completely and utterly evaporated. It sank to
a terrifying nadir where massive formations of
troops weren't fighting to the death and they
weren't executing organized fighting retreats.
They were simply throwing down their weapons
and capitulating. Five entire German divisions
were effectively engulfed, neutralized and wiped
off the order of battle in hours. The primary
sources detail a complete breakdown in fundamental
military discipline that is chilling to read.
We are not just discussing exhausted men fleeing
from tanks. We are looking at accounts of brazen
open mutiny occurring directly on the battlefield.
As defeated, demoralized German troops were streaming
backward away from the advancing Allied armor.
They were actively turning on their own officers
who were desperately attempting to rally them.
They were shouting, you're prolonging the war
directly at their commanders. That specific phrase,
prolonging the war, signals a massive psychological
paradigm shift. When a soldier yells that at
their own commanding officer, they no longer
view the conflict as a patriotic struggle for
national survival or victory. They view the war
purely as a senseless, unwinnable meat grinder.
And more importantly, they view their own officers
not as leaders to be followed, but as the cruel
architects forcing them to remain inside that
machine. The animosity extended even further.
When those retreating soldiers passed by fresh
German reserve troops who were marching forward
to the front lines to try and plug the massive
15 -mile gap, the retreating men hurled furious
insults at them. They literally called their
own reinforcements black legs. Which is a highly
loaded term. Blackleg is traditionally used in
a civilian labor dispute to describe a strikebreaker.
A scab. By using that specific word, the retreating
soldiers were essentially making a unified declaration.
We have gone on strike. We refuse to participate
in this war anymore. And by marching up here
to fight, you are breaking our strike and keeping
this horror going. When an imperial army begins
viewing its military service through the lens
of a hostile labor strike against its own government,
the war is, in their minds, definitively over.
General Paul von Hindenburg, the legendary chief
of the German general staff, offered his own
grim analytical assessment of the disaster. He
pointed to how completely the Allies had managed
to dismantle the German command and control infrastructure.
Hindenburg recognized that the sheer velocity
of the Allied armored advance, combined with
Bugwort's incredibly precise artillery strikes
on communication nodes, had physically isolated
the German command posts. The commanders sitting
in the rear echelons literally had no idea the
front line had collapsed until Allied tanks were
practically driving past their windows. The telephone
wires were shredded, runners couldn't make it
through the barrage, and as a result the command
structure was paralyzed. They couldn't issue
orders to fall back. They couldn't coordinate
defensive artillery. And they were completely
incapable of organizing any effective localized
counterattacks. It was a total systems failure
of both military infrastructure and human morale.
It was the definitive turning point of the conflict.
But as military history consistently demonstrates,
war is rarely a neat cinematic narrative where
one side executes a flawless victory. and the
conflict neatly concludes the following day.
As the sun set on the Black Day and the Allied
commanders prepared to push their advantage into
day two, the brutal grinding friction of war
began to fiercely reassert itself. The second
phase of the battle, running from August 9th
through the 12th, which included the Battle of
Montidier in the south, was a drastically different,
much uglier story. The spectacular, fluid, mechanized
advance of that first morning rapidly began to
bog down, and it slowed down for a very pragmatic,
unavoidable reason. The nightmare of logistics.
The very speed that made the first 24 hours so
historically successful became a critical liability
onto day two. The Allied infantry and armor had
pushed so far, so aggressively deep into German
territory that they simply outran their own supporting
artillery network. You cannot quickly drag heavy
multi -ton howitzers through miles of newly captured,
heavily cratered, mud -soaked battlefields at
the same speed a soldier can sprint. And without
that protective umbrella of heavy artillery cover,
the advancing infantry once again became highly
vulnerable to entrenched German machine guns.
The road networks were an absolute disaster,
too. On the Canadian front, the few intact roads
became paralyzed by unbelievable congestion.
You had fresh troops trying to march forward,
supply wagons hauling ammunition, thousands of
wounded men being evacuated back to the rear,
and massive columns of German prisoners being
marched away from the front. It created a monumental
traffic jam. The British 32nd Division, which
was ordered to push forward rapidly to maintain
the momentum of the attack, simply got stuck
in the gridlock. They physically could not reach
the front lines fast enough to exploit the gaps.
Furthermore, we have to critically examine the
mechanical attrition rate of the armored forces.
This specific data point is staggering and vital
to understanding the era. We established that
the Allies launched the Amiens offensive with
a formidable force of nearly 600 tanks, which
were absolutely instrumental in crushing the
barbed wire and breaking the lines on August
8th. Within just four days of continuous combat
operations, out of those 500 -plus forward fighting
tanks, only six individual machines were still
considered battle -ready. Six. From over 500
fighting tanks down to six in less than a week.
That is a completely unimaginable attrition rate.
It perfectly encapsulates the extreme technological
limitations of 1918. Tanks were a revolutionary
concept. They represented an absolute paradigm
shift for breaking the deadlock of trench warfare.
But mechanically, they were incredibly unreliable,
rudimentary beasts. The environment inside a
Mark V was hellish. Temperatures reached well
over a hundred degrees, the air was thick with
toxic carbon monoxide from the exposed engine,
and the deafening noise made communication impossible.
Beyond the sheer exhaustion of the crews, the
massive engines constantly broke down, the metal
tracks snapped in the deep mud, and because they
moved at a walking pace they were prime, highly
visible targets for concentrated German field
artillery. The harsh battlefield environment
simply devoured the machinery. And as the armored
momentum stalled and the tanks broke down, the
fighting reverted to the incredibly bloody, static
nature the troops knew all too well. Up north,
in the sector assigned to the British 3rd Corps,
there was a specific punishing piece of geography
that turned into an absolute nightmare for the
Allied advance. It was called the Chipley Spur.
Chipley Ridge was a bare, prominent, 75 foot
high chalk ridge located inside a deep, winding
oxbow bend of the Salm River, situated near the
small village of Chipley. The British forces
had failed to capture it on the initial thrust
of August 8th due to the exceedingly rough terrain
and the fact that they were only allocated a
single tank battalion for support in that northern
sector. Because it was elevated 75 feet above
the surrounding river valley, the ridge provided
the German defenders with a sweeping commanding
view over a vast expanse of the battlefield.
The German machine gunners and artillery observers
were sitting highly elevated on this ridge looking
directly down across the river valley and pouring
a devastating unceasing volume of fire directly
down onto the Australian Corps who were completely
pinned down near a place called Hamel. The Australians
were trapped. They literally couldn't move out
of their shallow trenches without getting immediately
cut to pieces by plunging fire. The Allies desperately
had to take that ridge to relieve the pressure,
but the British forces in that sector were exhausted,
depleted, and heavily bogged down. Consequently,
the desperate, brutal job of assaulting Chipoli
Ridge was handed over to the Americans. Specifically,
three battalions of American infantrymen, often
referred to as Doughboys, from the 33rd U .S.
Infantry Division. These were primarily National
Guard troops who had been temporarily attached
to support the British operations. The accounts
of this specific assault are incredibly intense.
At 5 .30 p .m. on the evening of August 9th,
these American troops initiate their attack.
They are ordered to march directly up this bare,
chalky ridge, completely exposed to the enemy,
while heavy German machine gun and artillery
fire is continuously plunging down on them from
the entrenched positions at the summit. Despite
taking heavy casualties, they refuse to break
or be driven back down the hill. Drawing from
the sources, specifically referencing the historical
analysis by author B .J. Omensson, the American
forces repeatedly press the grueling assault
until they finally manage to secure the northern
half of the ridge, as well as the southern extremity
of a nearby heavily fortified area known as Gressere
Wood. They did not halt their momentum there.
They continued pressing the brutal close quarters
combat into the following day, eventually capturing
the entirety of Gressere Wood from the German
defenders. By the time the American assault concluded,
they had captured 700 German prisoners, seized
30 heavy artillery pieces, secured an enemy airplane,
and confiscated more than 100 deadly machine
guns. But this victory required a massive toll
in human life and endurance. And this specific
engagement brings us to one of the most remarkable,
deeply personal stories of the entire offensive.
The heroism. of Corporal Jake Alex. Corporal
Alex's story perfectly illuminates the deeply
human individual element that exists amidst all
this grand sweeping military strategy. Jake Alex
was an immigrant born in Kosovo, Serbia. He traveled
to the United States and found himself fighting
in a U .S. Army uniform as part of the 33rd Division.
During the absolute chaos and carnage of the
uphill assault on Chipley Ridge, his platoon
was being decimated by an entrenched German machine
gun nest that was halting the advance. The situation
becomes catastrophic. Every single commanding
officer in his platoon is killed or severely
wounded. in the relentless crossfire. So Jake
Alex, an immigrant corporal, steps up into the
leadership vacuum and assumes total command of
the surviving men. He leads them in a direct,
desperate frontal charge against that firing
machine gun nest. According to his official citation,
during that ferocious charge, he personally killed
five enemy soldiers and captured 15 prisoners,
violently silencing the gun that was destroying
his unit. His actions under such extreme duress
were so extraordinary and so tactically critical
to the overall success of capturing the ridge
and relieving the pinned down Australian forces
across the river that Corporal Jake Alex was
awarded the Medal of Honor. To put that into
perspective, he became only the second American
soldier to earn the Medal of Honor during the
entirety of the First World War. It's an astonishing
narrative that highlights the deeply international,
complexly interwoven nature of this specific
battle. You have. An immigrant from Kosovo wearing
the uniform of the United States, taking command
in the chaos of an assault on a French ridge,
fighting a German machine gun crew, specifically
to save the lives of Australian soldiers who
are pinned down across the river valley. It is
a vivid snapshot of what it means to fight a
true world war. It truly is. And the successful
capture of Chipoli Ridge essentially shattered
the last major cohesive sticking point of the
German defensive line in that immediate sector.
By August 10th, the Allied reconnaissance planes
and forward observers were reporting clear, undeniable
signs that the German army was abandoning their
positions and pulling out of the entire salient
they'd so bloodily carved out during Operation
Michael. They were in full retreat. By August
13th... Even operating with almost zero functional
tanks left to support the infantry, the British
forces had managed to drive a staggering 12 miles
deep into the former German positions. Officially,
by August 27th, command reports stated the Allies
had captured nearly 50 ,000 German prisoners
and over 500 artillery pieces in the Amiens sector.
But at this crucial juncture, Field Marshal Haig
makes a highly significant strategic decision
regarding the future of the campaign. Marshall
Fosch, acting as the Supreme Allied Commander,
was determined to keep aggressively pushing the
Amiens offensive forward, desperate to squeeze
every last drop of territorial gain and momentum
out of the retreating Germans. But Haig firmly
refused the request. He possessed a clear -eyed
understanding of the tactical reality on the
ground. His troops were deeply exhausted, the
logistical supply lines were dangerously strained,
the tank corps was non -existent, and the vital
element of surprise was completely gone. Instead
of grinding his men into dust against the rapidly
hardening secondary German defensive lines, Haig
preferred to halt the Amiens operation. shift
the focus entirely, and launch a fresh, massive
offensive with General Julian Bing's 3rd Army
further north in the sector between the Ankar
and the Skarpie Rivers. That strategic pivot
kicked off the Second Battle of the Somme on
August 21st. But even as the localized Battle
of Amiens officially wrapped up, its impact on
the trajectory of the war was absolute and permanent.
The fundamental tempo of the conflict had irreversibly
changed. It had changed completely. Amiens marks
the definitive death knell of the static unimaginative
trench warfare that had stubbornly defined the
Western Front ever since the race to the sea
in the autumn of 1914. When both armies initially
tried to outflank each other, digging trenches
all the way from the Swiss border to the English
Channel. Mobile combined arms warfare had officially
returned to the battlefield. Monash and the Allied
command proved that if you utilized armor in
mass quantities, precisely synchronized with
creeping artillery barrages, relentless air support
and highly motivated infantry, you could successfully
rupture the deepest, most complex defensive lines
imaginable. The British war correspondent Philip
Gibbs was actually present on the battlefield.
And he wrote a dispatch on August 27th that perfectly
captures the profound shift in the atmosphere.
He observed that the operational initiative was
now so completely in allied hands that they were
able to strike the enemy at multiple different
locations entirely at will. But his most astute,
enduring observation was regarding the mindset
of the men. He wrote, the change has been greater
in the minds of men than in the taking of territory.
Gibbs recognized a fundamental truth of conflict.
The true victory wasn't the 12 miles of recaptured,
ruined French mud. It was the monumental psychological
shift. He noted that the Allied troops, who had
been battered for years, were suddenly buoyed
by an enormous, palpable hope that they could
finally get on with this business quickly and
end the war. Conversely, he observed that the
German forces no longer possessed even a dim,
flickering hope of achieving victory on the Western
Front. As Gibbs bluntly put it, all the German
army hoped for now was to defend themselves long
enough to compel a peace by negotiation. Amiens
forced the German high command to confront their
inevitable defeat. The sheer magnitude and strategic
brilliance of what was achieved at Amiens resulted
in an unprecedented wave of honors and decorations.
On August 12th, while the second phase of the
battle was still technically underway, King George
V actually traveled across the channel to the
battlefield. He formally knighted Lieutenant
General John Monash, the primary architect of
the mechanized attack, investing him as a knight
commander of the Order of the Bath, right there
in the field amidst the troops. That was an incredibly
rare, historically significant honor. The sources
indicate it was the first time a British monarch
had knighted a military commander on an active
battlefield in 200 years. It speaks volumes about
how heavily the British leadership valued Monash's
brilliant unorthodox planning, and flawless execution.
The immense courage of the individual soldiers
fighting in the mud was recognized on a massive
scale as well. Eight Canadian soldiers were awarded
the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry,
for their incredible actions during the Battle
of Imia, including men like Private John Croke,
Corporal Harry Minor, and Lieutenant Gene Brilliant.
But one specific story from the Australian ranks
really stands out in the historical record, the
story of Alfred Gabby. Alfred Gabby's story serves
as a profound, heartbreaking example of the bittersweet
reality of this conflict. On the very first morning,
August 8th, Gabby was acting as the commander
of his unit when the rapid advance was suddenly
halted by a large, heavily armed German force
positioned about 40 yards beyond a dense wire
obstacle. His unit is pinned down under heavy,
concentrated machine gun and rifle fire. Gabby
manages to find a small gap in the barbed wire.
He approaches the enemy strongpoint completely
single -handedly, maneuvering under a hail of
bullets, and empties his revolver directly into
the German garrison. He physically drives the
surviving crews away from their weapons, capturing
50 anti -soldiers and four heavy machine guns
entirely by himself. He earns the Victoria Cross
for this act of absolute unimaginable valor on
what was the greatest day of advance in the entire
war. But tragically, The war did not end on the
afternoon of August 8th. Just three days later
on August 11th, while leading his men in an assault
on a town called Lihans, Alfred Gabey was shot
and killed by a random enemy sniper. It is a
stark grounding reminder. It pulls this grand
sweeping narrative of a massive strategic empire
toppling victory back down into the brutal, fragile,
deeply individual reality of the soldiers fighting
on the ground. A man can achieve the highest
possible valor single -handedly change the course
of a local engagement and still fall victim to
a single anonymous bullet just days later. It
is a deeply sobering reality. And precisely because
of the dramatic emotional highs and the devastating
lows of this offensive, the Battle of Amiens
has left a massive enduring footprint in our
cultural memory. Even over a century later, the
events of August 8th continue to be explored
and represented across popular culture. We see
the battle represented across widely different
mediums. In the digital sphere, the video game
Battlefield 1 features Amiens as a major, highly
detailed map for modes like Conquest and Rush,
and it serves as a pivotal part of the game's
Kaiserschlag operation. The developers attempted
to visually capture the intense, urban, and trench
combat characteristic of that specific offensive.
It also serves as a major dramatic plot point
in television. If you have ever watched the historical
drama Downton Abbey season two, episode five
revolves entirely around the events of the Battle
of Amiens. It depicts the battle where the central
character Matthew Crawley is severely injured
and paralyzed by an artillery shell and where
the young footman William Mason is tragically
killed while heroically throwing himself in front
of Matthew to shield him from the blast. And
in literature. The sheer sensory horror and geographic
chaos of the battle was brilliantly immortalized
by the American war poet, Lieutenant John Allen
Wyeth. Wyeth was a fascinating figure, a Princeton
graduate educated in languages and literature
who found himself serving as a soldier in the
33rd U .S. Division. On the rainy pitch black
night of August 8th, As the American forces were
moving into their forward positions to eventually
assault the Chipoli Ridge we discussed earlier,
Wyeth and another lieutenant, Thomas J. Cochran,
were assigned an incredibly dangerous, almost
impossible mission. They were ordered to deliver
highly classified, sealed operational orders
from the division headquarters located at Moliombois,
all the way forward to the field headquarters
of the three specific battalions tasked with
the attack. And the terrifying part is Command
didn't even know exactly where those battalions
were currently located. Wyeth and Cochran just
knew the battalions were somewhere in the darkness
near the ruined village of Salih Lasek on the
north bank of the Som River. Wyeth later channeled
this harrowing, deeply traumatic experience of
wandering blindly through a dark, chaotic, corpse
-strewn battlefield into a brilliant sequence
of poetry. In his 1928 literary work, This Man's
Army, he composed six intricately interlinked
sonnets that became known as the Chipley Ridge
Sonnets. The literary critic B .J. Omensson powerfully
described Wyeth's sequence as capturing a soldier's
stumblings through the metaphoric valley of death.
Wyeth's poetry doesn't just list the historical
facts, it dives deeply into the crushing psychological
and sensory nature of navigating an active war
zone at night. He describes the blinding chalk
dust, overwhelming smell of cordite and death,
the sudden terrifying flashes of artillery illuminating
the ruins, and the profound, isolating fear of
stepping into the unknown darkness while the
machinery of war grinds all around you. It serves
as a vital historical counterweight to the neat
clinical lines drawn on the generals tactical
maps, reminding us of the visceral, terrifying
reality experienced by the men tasked with actually
executing the breakthrough. So as we wrap up
this deep dive into the historical sources, let's
look at the massive takeaways we've uncovered
today. We witnessed an entire allied military
apparatus shift away from a stubborn, unimaginative,
bloody war of attrition to a dynamic doctrine
based entirely on speed, new technology. technology,
and unbelievable multisensory deception. We saw
the absolute mastery of logistics orchestrated
by John Monash, the wild desperate ingenuity
of masking deafening tank engines with heavy
bombers flying blindly through the fog, and the
definitive birth of modern combined arms warfare.
But above all, we witnessed the complete irreversible
collapse of the German fighting spirit. If we
synthesize everything we've analyzed in these
sources today, The ultimate victor at Amiens
wasn't simply the invention of the tank or the
airplane or the complex mathematics of sound
-ranging artillery. The technology was absolutely
crucial, yes, but the true victor was unprecedented
coordination. It was the remarkable ability of
the Allied command to take French, British, Canadian,
Australian, and American forces, along with infantrymen,
armor crews, airmen, and artillerymen, and compel
them all to act together as a single... devastating,
synchronized organism. That precise level of
complex cooperation is what finally shattered
the Western Front. It stands as an incredible
historical and logistical achievement. But I
want to leave you with a final thought to mull
over today as we conclude. When General Ludendorff
sat down in his headquarters and officially declared
August 8th the Black Day of the German Army.
He wasn't staring at a tactical map. He wasn't
mourning the loss of 12 miles of ruined French
mud or even lamenting the loss of 500 artillery
guns. He was looking directly into the faces
of his own exhausted men. He was listening to
the reports of them actively yelling strike breaker
at their own reinforcements. It raises a truly
fascinating, enduring question about the very
nature of human conflict. How much of a war is
actually fought in the physical world of muddy
trenches, rusted barbed wire and artillery shells?
And how much of it is actually fought and ultimately
decided deep inside the complex architecture
of the human mind? Because Amiens conclusively
proves that when the fundamental belief in victory
finally dies, when the psychological will of
a soldier to continue the struggle simply evaporates,
the war is already over, no matter how many bullets
you still have left in your gun. A profoundly
important point. end on. Indeed. Thank you so
much for joining us on this deep dive into the
historical sources. Keep exploring the past,
keep questioning the narratives, and we will
see you next time as we uncover another fascinating
turning point in history.